


Drafts

by greenapricot



Series: Eventually the Birds Must Land [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-s9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I wake in the night and I look at the clock and I add three and that’s where you are, sometime tomorrow afternoon.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>James and Robbie exchange emails while Robbie is away. These are the emails James never sends.</p><p>Spoilers for S9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drafts

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to Jack for the Brit-pick, accidental beta, and encouragement. All remaining mistakes are my own.

                       His hands keep turning into  
birds, and his hands keep flying away  
from him. _Eventually the birds must land._

–Unfinished Duet, Richard Siken

_________________

  
  
I called you today even though I know full well your number doesn't ring through, that it goes straight to voicemail. I called you to listen to your recorded voice. Twice.

I know we could actually talk. We could Skype. Laura would help you sort it. But I don't have anything to say. Nothing specific or new or interesting. I just want you near me. 

 

You are, right now, being missed.

 

I’ve been drinking too much since you left. I was drinking too much when you were here. 

Today they took the extra desk out of the office. It’s a bit of a relief. The weeks it was there and you weren’t I kept turning round and expecting to see you frowning at your computer over some report or other. Kept talking to you before my brain caught up with my mouth and reminded me that you weren't there. Kept expecting you to come through the door and drag me out for lunch, a pint, tell me to go home at a reasonable hour. But you didn't and I haven’t.

 

I’m beginning to regret those times I skipped having a pint with you to read to Dad. I do regret them, but not more than I feel like shit for wanting to have sat next to you in a pub instead of being with him. I know it won’t be long now, I know skipping out on those pints was the right thing to do, but right now he is here—as much as he can be when he doesn’t know who Nell and I are—and you are not. 

Someday he will be gone and you will be back and I’ll still feel like shit for wanting to be with you more than him. And it’s a horrible comparison anyway. They way I want to be with you, there’s nothing familial about it.

 

I wish I'd been able to say a proper goodbye. But in that moment if I’d looked right at you, if I’d said out loud how much I would miss you, if I’d touched you, I wouldn’t have been able to keep from kissing you again. And I wouldn't have had an excuse this time. 

God, but I wanted to. I still want to. Cup your face in my hands, kiss you until I run out of breath, keep kissing you. Taste your lips with my tongue, pull you against me and let you feel how much kissing you affects me. 

I can't keep myself from thinking about the possibilities. What it would have felt like to hold you like that, to kiss you like that, not just that one awkward fumble on the sofa but to properly hold you in my arms. That one drunken taste might have been the worst bad decision of all my many bad decisions, but I'm not sure I will ever be able to bring myself to wish it undone. 

But I am sorry. Sorry that I kissed you. Sorry that you had to see me so drunk and maudlin that kissing you when you were only trying to be kind seemed like a reasonable course of action. Sorry that I couldn't keep myself in check for two more weeks until you and the temptation were gone. Sorry that I told you that you shouldn’t assume people know you love them when I couldn't even follow my own advice. I'm sorry I passed it off as so much less than it actually is. But mostly I’m sorry for myself. 

I’m grateful too though, grateful that you never mentioned it. You held my shoulders and looked into my eyes like you were reading my soul and you never mentioned it again. You didn't treat me any differently, didn't flinch or run or ask what was wrong with me. I think you know, though. You don't need to ask. 

I suppose that was me telling you, telling you things I can barely even think to myself. It was a flawed attempt if ever there was one. 

I don't know how I let myself get to that state. So many years of resisting, of keeping myself in check, I suppose I was just too worn down to resist any longer. 

 

I can’t shake the feeling that this is the end, that you are never coming back, even though my rational mind knows that's not true. And that makes me want to do unwise things as if there is nothing left to lose. As if I've already lost you. Maybe I have. I have lost the presence of you in my everyday. 

I know that you are happy and I want you to be happy, but there is a part of me, a rather large part, that wishes you had decided to stay for the job. I’m part of the job. 

But there is no way to say that to you that doesn't sound petty and selfish and like I'm not happy for you and Laura, because I am happy for you. Both of you. I’m just not happy for myself. 

 

You went, but I didn’t go too. 

 

I don’t think I ever told you how much it meant to me when you came back to work after I made Inspector. 

I’m hedging even though you'll never see this. I’m shaking my head at myself for that; you’d be shaking your head at me too.

I never told you how much it meant to me. But I think you know. I hope you know. I never said but you must know I needed you. You helped me get out of my own way and I'll always be grateful for that.

 

I’m doing some good here, more good than I would have been doing research for Professor Pinnock, more good to the world. That's what's keeping me here now, what brought me back in the end after my long walk. It still gets to me, the job—the death, the grief more than anything—but if I am doing good, regardless of what it's doing to me, how can I in good conscience stop? 

The priesthood wasn't for me, that much is obvious. I was running from things more than to them when I entered seminary, but a vocation is not an escape. It can’t be. It must be met with open heart and mind and that is something I have never had, as much as I wanted it, as much as I craved it. As steeped as I wanted to be in my own conviction there were always lurking doubts. Will bore the brunt of that and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for it. But happiness in intelligent people is rare; if nothing else I am proof of that. 

 

I wake in the night, I always have done, always been crap at sleeping. I wake in the night and I look at the clock and I add three and that’s where you are, sometime tomorrow afternoon. 

 

I miss you. I miss sitting on your sofa with a beer and QI on nights Laura is on a call out and we aren’t. I miss all those years when it was just us. Those nights I'd have a few too many and kip on your too short sofa. I miss making you breakfast. I miss bringing you proper coffee during the workday. I haven't done that since I was your sergeant but I still miss it. I miss teasing you about your cooking to make Laura laugh. I miss the look on your face when we gang up on you. I miss your lack of personal space around me. I miss the kindness of your eyes. I miss your face. 

 

Thought I saw you today. Came round a corner and there walking in front of me was a man who looked exactly like you from behind. I think my heart actually skipped a beat.

 

I am collecting things, pieces, memories. They are all about you. I don't know what I'll do with them. I don't know if the collection can ever be complete.

 

I dream about you, my sleeping mind providing unending scenarios of how it could have been. How it could be. The first few seconds after I wake I can still feel the ghost of your lips on mine. 

 

Did it feel like this for you when I left? When I walked the Camino. No, of course it didn't. You had Laura. You have Laura. All I have is this tug on my heart, a string that leads nowhere, a one way connection. 

This is not how it should feel when a friend goes on holiday, even if it is a very long holiday. It never felt like this with all of the other people who have drifted out of my life. And they always do drift. I can’t seem to keep hold of them; they slip through my fingers even when I don’t want them to; just drift away, no pull, no ocean of unsaid things in between. 

 

Attaway Hathaway, doesn't know what he wants until it's gone. 

 

Fell asleep on the sofa last night, leaning into the corner. Dreamt it was you I was leaning on, that when I woke your arm was around me and my head on your shoulder, and when I stirred you pulled me to you. 

Then I did wake, stiff neck and drooling on the arm of the sofa. 

 

Dad died today. I don't know what to say about that. I don't know what to feel about it either. He died today but he hasn't known who I was for months. Truth is he never knew who I was, never took the time. Or at least he never let me know if he did. He read all my books. He read all my books and he made notes in them but he never said anything. I'll never know if he knew me. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. I don't want it to matter. 

Dad died today and I was with him. I was holding his hand, but he didn't know me and I didn't know him. I wanted to say last rites; I want his soul to be at peace. I want to want that. 

I lost it when I got home. I haven’t cried like that since Crevecoeur, but I'm not sure I was crying for him. I want to say it felt good to let it out but my eyes and throat are still raw and I just feel hollow inside. Used up. 

 

The life of James Hathaway, one long chain of things unsaid, one after another, after another. 

 

The funeral was awful. All those distant relatives, people I haven't seen in twenty years or more. I don't even know if they knew him. And if they knew him did they know him better than his own son did? I suspect so. I couldn't ask. I don't want to know. I don't want to care. But I think I am actually mourning something I lost years ago not someone I lost a week ago. 

I suppose I should talk to someone. That's what you'd say, well meaning and with the assumption that I have someone to talk to; that I would manage to make myself say something, anything, even if I did. 

I lost that when I lost my faith. I still could, I know, confess my sins of pride and selfishness and anger and lust but I'm not sure I should be forgiven even if I still believed I would be. 

You would take one look at me, take me back to yours, sit me down on the sofa, hand me a beer, and wait me out. I wish you were here to do that. I'm glad you're not. When did I become so needy? I suppose my father did just die, I could maybe give myself a pass for that.

I shouldn’t want to unburden myself on you but I know exactly the look you'd give me if I said that. _Give over_ , you'd say, _of course you can_. I knew it was true when you were standing next to me; it must still be true now you’re not anymore but it’s hard to fathom.

 

Winter has come; the sky has closed in grey and low. Finally the weather matches my mood. 

 

I had hoped that the ache in my chest would lessen once you were gone, that it would dissipate with each day I didn't see you. 

No such luck. Not so far. 

But then luck’s never been much in my favour.

I think you have taken a piece of me with you to the other side of the world. How did I not notice until now that you held that piece of me so firmly that it wouldn't snap back to me once it got far enough away? Now it is stretched thin across oceans and landmasses, a constant tug, the new never-ending background noise of my day. 

 

Shit. I'm such a fucking mess. It's my job to untangle the pieces of other people's fucked up lives and yet I can't seem to properly navigate my own. 

Oh, not that much of a mess, I'm not going to do anything foolish, I'm just going round and round in my own head chasing my own tail and self indulgent thoughts. 

 

As ridiculous as it sounds I could really use a hug. I think you would give me one if I asked. I wonder if I'll ever be able to ask. 

 

I tried to do good by Dad at the end, something he never managed for me. Not when it would have mattered. Now, with the perspective of years I do think he tried, I want to believe he did in his way. I think I can begin to understand what it might have been like for him after Crevecoeur. After Mum. How it is to spend all your available resources holding yourself together and still only half manage it. But I was so angry then. So scared. I couldn't see anything outside my own head. I'm still crap at that. Unless it's to do with work. Thanks to my shitty childhood for making me such an excellent detective.

 

Why does it hurt so much now when there was a time all I wanted was to disappear from his view? That is exactly why I suppose. And I do forgive him now, now that it’s too late. I could have told him but he wouldn’t have known. So what would the point have been in that? The same point as these emails I imagine. Whatever that is.

By the time I was ready to forgive him he was already gone, just a shell that looked like him. And I could talk to the shell in a way I could never talk to the man. Such a fucking coward am I. 

There are things I should have said to my father, there are things he should have said to me. With you it’s not at all the same, but there is a lesson here. I should say those things. If I don't now I may never get the chance. Doesn't make it any less terrifying to contemplate. Makes it more terrifying in fact.

 

The truth has always been so difficult, both the fact of it and the act of telling. There is almost-comfort in things not said, edges danced around. 

Okay, it's possible I've had quite enough scotch for one evening.

 

You once told me that I should find a partner, but the truth is I already had. I had you, as much of you as I was going to have. I should be grateful for that. I try to be grateful for that. I honestly don’t know anymore if never having met you would have been better than being your partner in all but the way I wanted most. No, I do. I wouldn’t trade any moment with you for anything else, even when you were angry with me and spitting feathers. You wouldn’t have felt betrayed if you didn’t care at least a little. 

 

I dreamt about David Capstone and the bomb last night. You were closer to the blast in the dream, the bomb didn't make it all the way out the window and you took the brunt of it. You were covered in blood and plaster and I held you as your life drained away. It felt like I was being ripped apart. I woke up sobbing, unable to breathe. 

It's been months since that day and months since I even thought about that case. Don't know why I'm dreaming about it now. 

Okay, no. I do. Thank you, subconscious, for showing me what it would be like if someone I felt closer to than my own father died. I really needed that. 

I had hoped writing it down would exorcise those images from my head, but I keep seeing you laying limp and bloody in my arms every time I close my eyes. 

Another 3 am drink it is, then. 

It's 6 pm where you are. 

 

This is dangerous, I feel like I'm talking to you even though I'm not, that you are my confessional and you hear all I say and will absolve my sins. But there is no absolution and I'm not even wholly convinced these are sins any longer. 

When I see you again will I be able to remember that you don't know these things? I think about sending these emails to you. What would you say? Would you say anything? It's a hell of a thing to drop on someone. I have no idea what I'd do. Unless it was coming from you.

If I could send them and know that you would read them and not mention it, not treat me differently, I would. 

 

I love you. I am in love with you, I have been for years. I am still in love with you. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. Fuck. 

 

I miss you like I'm missing a piece of myself. 

 

I’ve been fantasising about sending these to you, about what you’d do. That I’d send them and you wouldn’t respond but a week later there would be a knock at my door and I’d open it to you standing there in that awful shirt with your suitcase in hand. Before I could even say anything you’d drop the suitcase and pull me to you and kiss me and I’d just melt into you and let you back me into the flat leaving your suitcase forgotten in the hall.

You'd look at me and I'd look at you.

 _How long?_ you’d ask. And I wouldn't be able to answer. _You should have said something_ , you’d say.

 _I did_ , I'd say. _But I was too late._

 _Not too late, lad_ , you’d say.

But even in my fantasies I feel guilty for hurting Laura. And even so I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so much in my entire life. 

Fuck. 

I must be losing my mind. 

 

I dreamt of you again last night. You were on top of me, fucking me slow and deep, exactly how I wanted and I still couldn't get enough. I was pulling you to me, hands on your arse, pushing back against your thrusts. I was so close, so close. 

 

You're coming back in three days. I'm picking you up at the airport. I can't decide if I should bring the sign. I can’t sit still. I can't sleep but for entirely different reasons to usual. 

 

I did it. I sent them. 

Fuck.

Why did I do that? I wanted to. 

Fuck. 

Self-sabotage is one of my mostly finely honed skills.

Fuck.

Fuck.

 

What’s done is done. I can’t take it back now. I can’t take any of it back. There is the very real possibility that you won’t see them before you get back. That you won’t check your email on your last night. There is also the possibility that you will do exactly as I wanted and not tell me you read them. I think I’ll know though, if you have. You’re not as good at hiding things as I am. 

 

I've smoked six cigarettes since I got up and it's only 8:30. I leave for the airport in 30 minutes.

 

You are here. Actually here. In my flat. In my bedroom. In my bed. I know how this happened but I still don't know how it happened. I don’t know how Laura can be okay with this except that she very clearly is, would never have sent us off to my flat together if she wasn’t. I suspect she may be a better detective than either of us. Even despite that one drunken kiss it seems that this whole thing between us was less of a surprise to her than it was to you. Possibly it was less of a surprise to her than it was to me as well. 

I don't know how I'm ever going to properly thank her. I'll make you both dinner tomorrow, that will be a start. There will have to be a lot of dinners. 

My jaw hurts, not from sucking you off but from smiling. I can't stop. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop. It's going to be rough at crime scenes.


End file.
